


Never Alone

by thesometimeswarrior



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Illnesses, Mentor/Protégé, Pompous Pep, Post-Phantom Planet, Recovery, Time Travel, badger cereal, brief mention of suicidal thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-05-29 07:55:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6365632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesometimeswarrior/pseuds/thesometimeswarrior
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"And now, yet again, inside and outside, Vlad was on fire. He writhed and gasped and screamed...he wanted it to end…anything for it to end…he wanted to die. He wanted to die to die to die—</p><p>'Shhhh. You’ll be okay.'</p><p>He squinted, trying to localize the voice. Only then did he notice the figure standing over him. <i>Jack</i>, he thought briefly. <i>Jack’s finally come</i>—but no. Though the man—<i>boy?</i>—did bear a striking resemblance to Jack Fenton, Vlad thought, he was smaller, scrawnier, younger perhaps."</p><p> </p><p>Several years after the events of Phantom Planet, Danny determines an infallible plan to prevent hundreds of people from being hurt: comfort one lonely man in the hospital and support him as his world changes.</p><p>Could be read as either badger cereal (platonic Vlad & Danny) or Pompous Pep (Vlad/Danny).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

As he writhed against his restraints, he screamed in agony—although whether or the scream left his mouth, or stayed lodged in his throat, Vlad didn’t know. It didn’t matter. No one would come to help him—there could be no help for these episodes, they had said, for the times when the sores all over his body swelled and burned, when his insides burned along with them. And it wasn’t for lack of trying. The first time this had happened, the doctors had tried a variety of creams and ointments, and when these proved ineffective—and some even made the burning worse—they had tried to subdue him for a release from the pain. But, oddly, the anesthetic had had no effect—he was as awake and lucid as he had ever been—and all they could do was restrain him to the bed to keep him from injuring himself. 

And now, yet again, inside and outside, Vlad was on fire. He writhed and gasped and screamed...he wanted it to end…anything for it to end…he wanted to die. He wanted to die to die to die—

“Shhhh. You’ll be okay.” 

He squinted, trying to localize the voice. Only then did he notice the figure standing over him. _Jack_ , he thought briefly. _Jack’s finally come_ —but no. Though the man— _boy?_ —did bear a striking resemblance to Jack Fenton, Vlad thought, he was smaller, scrawnier, younger perhaps. 

Whoever he was, he took a cool, damp, cloth, and unfazed by the sores, placed it on Vlad’s forehead. “I know this doesn’t help much,” he said. “But hopefully it does a little.” He placed another cloth on Vlad’s stomach, and continued to place more around his body, rewetting and replacing each after a few minutes. Vlad sighed. The relief, though minute, was nonetheless palpable, and he was grateful for it. 

Eventually, after what felt like hours, the pain subsided and Vlad gradually regained his power of speech. He silently motioned for the boy to undo his restraints, and when he was unshackled, Vlad slowly sat up in bed. “Who…” he asked the other person faintly. “are you?”

“Oh, sorry,” said the boy gripping his neck. “I’m Danny. Or…you might prefer Daniel, I guess.”

“Why would I prefer Daniel?”

“You know, I’m not really sure.”

“Do you work for the hospital? Because I’ve been here for months, and I haven’t seen you before.”

“Not exactly,” responded Danny. “I…I’m a friend. And I’ve got, uh… _experience_ with what you’re dealing with.”

“Are you…from the government? Jack always thought that they must be tracking us...I thought he was crazy, but—”

“No. But, I went through something similar to what you’re currently dealing with.”

“They said there’s been no other cases of ecto-acne before.”

“Not ecto-acne. But I was in a lab accident involving a ghost portal too. And some of the other effects—”

“ _What_ other effects? There are no other effects.”

“No? What about the white hair?”

“Okay, so an accident made me look older. I have more… _pressing_ …issues. What’d it do to you—make you look like a child? How old are you anyway?”

“Eighteen.”

“So you _are_ a child.”

“Hey. I’m not much younger than you—how old are _you_ right now?”

“I’m twenty-one, for your information.”

“Not much older. But, I’m not just talking about the hair. All of your insides feel like they’re on fire, right?”

“It’s just the acne.”

“The acne’s _on_ your skin. I’m talking about the burning _inside_ your skin. Like something is dissolving your insides so that it can grow them anew.”

“But that’s…I assumed…it was just a side effect of the acne. That’s what they said. _What’s happening to me_?”

“Hey,” said the boy, Danny, soothingly, in response to what Vlad assumed was his panicked voice. He placed his hand on Vlad’s, which was covered in sores—without gloves, Vlad couldn’t help but notice. _He’s not afraid of me_ , he thought. _He sees_ me. 

“Whatever it is,” continued Danny. “I’m going to be here to help you through it. Vlad, you’re not gonna be alone on this one.”

And for the first time since the accident, Vlad felt that he could breathe.

* * *

Clockwork had told him no.

“Come on,” said Danny. “All the heartache he caused—the _Diasteroid_ —we could prevent all of it!”

“If I recall correctly, this is a remarkably similar argument to the one we had when you tried to stop the accident in the first place. And we both remember how that turned out.”

“This is nothing like that! I’m not stopping him from being affected by the accident. He still gets the acne. He still becomes a ghost. I’m not stopping my parents from getting together. The only thing I’m doing is making it so that, when Vlad does have to deal with the accident, he doesn’t have to deal with it alone.”

“You don’t know the ramifications of that.”

“But don’t _you_? Didn’t you once tell me that you ‘ _see all the twists that time might or might not take_ ’ or something? Is there some terrible result that comes from me trying to be there to support a man so lonely that he becomes twisted and evil before he becomes twisted and evil?”

“That is not the point.”

“Then what _is_?”

“Events unfolded a certain way. It is not our place to change them.”

“ _Not our place_? Now you sound like the Observants! Was it your place when you excised my older self from time? When you stopped my family and friends from being killed?”

“Would you rather I had let them die, punishing you, a fourteen-year-old boy for a crime you hardly committed, and allowing you to turn into the most evil ghost in history?”

“Of course not! But why _me_? He turns into something evil too! And it’s not his fault either! And to prevent it, we don’t need to excise anyone from time! All I have to do is comfort someone lonely. You don’t even have to do anything—I’ll take care of all of it! Just send me back!”

Finally, Clockwork sighed, handing Danny a medallion. “Very well…”

When Danny landed in the hospital, over six years before his birth, he found a group of doctors and nurses crowded around a locked door. When he got close enough to see through its window, he saw a young Vlad Masters, covered head-to-toe in ecto-sores, restrained to his bed and writhing in agony.

“Why isn’t someone helping him?!” he shouted to the doctors who stood, observing through the window.

“There’s nothing to be done. None of the topical or oral medications we have tried have had any effect on these flares, and he is inexplicably immune to anesthetic.”

“Then there’s _nothing_ that would help?”

“Perhaps some cool compresses would ease the pain, but to risk that kind of exposure for something without a long term effect would be—”

“I’ll do it!” said Danny. And a quick, routine overshadowing was all it took to convince a nurse to procure several clothes and chilled, distilled water for him. Gripping them, he marched into the hospital room.

Vlad was going to be okay. They both would.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick note--there's some minor language in this one. Just so you know.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy!

After their initial meeting, Danny seemed to come to Vlad’s bedside every day. When the acne flared and the pain would come, Danny quickly bound Vlad’s wrists and ankles to the bed in the leather restraints and fetched the cloths and water, sitting with him, using them to sooth Vlad’s sores to the best of his ability. And as he laid the damp cloths, Danny would whisper “You’ll be okay, Vlad,” and “I know it hurts,” and “Shhhh it’ll be over soon,” until eventually the pain subsided. (Though Danny usually only came during the day, the boy had an uncanny ability to know on which nights the acne would flare, and would somehow appear right before it did.) 

But even on those days the acne didn’t flare, Danny would still come to sit with him. He was easy to talk to, Vlad thought, so willing just to listen, that after a while Vlad found himself spilling his life story: how he’d wanted to be an engineer until he went to UW Madison, where met Jack and Maddie, who were interested in the studies of ecto-entities. Most people had thought them insane, and while Jack had interesting ideas without scientific fact to back them up, Maddie’s calculations and observations made a compelling argument, and he was taken with the field. Not only, he told Danny, did he become Jack and Maddie’s research partner, he became their friend. Or thought he was their friend…until…well, until...anyway, it didn’t matter. 

Danny would listen, and reciprocate: the boy had wanted to be an astronaut growing up, but worried because of how competitive the Space Program was. His circumstances had changed in the past several years though, Danny told Vlad, vaguely, and he had been thinking recently that perhaps there were more valuable ways he could spend his time. 

“Like coming here, putting water on my disgusting sores, and listening to me ramble on all day?” asked Vlad sarcastically, raising an eyebrow. 

Danny smiled without irony. “Exactly.”

* * *

One day, several months after Vlad met him, Danny was greeted with a frantic request as he entered Vlad’s hospital room. 

“Help me get the restraints on!” gasped Vlad.

“Do you feel an episode coming on?” asked Danny as he rushed to comply. Normally he timed it better than this. But he had checked Vlad’s medical file, which he had found in the hospital archives in his own time before approaching Clockwork, and it had said nothing about a flare today. Must have been an oversight, thought Danny. But normally they’re so meticulous and accurate at recording when the flares occur…

“No,” responded Vlad, snapping Danny out of his own thoughts. “It’s worse!”

“What could be worse?”

“ _Look_!” 

And as Danny approached Vlad’s bed, he saw that the man’s body was hovering about an inch above it—not enough to be noticed without being directly beside the bed, but, nonetheless, undoubtedly levitating. 

“Oh,” sighed Danny in relief, cracking a small smile. He had wondered when Vlad’s powers would begin to manifest.

“You think this is _funny_?”

“No, but I’d rather see you like this than in agony!”

“Just…help me get the restraints on!”

“Alright! Alright, already!” Danny complied, pulling Vlad onto the bed and binding his wrists and ankles to it. “There.”

Once he was firmly reattached to the bed, Vlad released a couple of shaky sighs. Finally, after a moment, he opened his mouth to speak again. “I— _AH!_ ” Now, Vlad had turned partially intangible, just enough for his limbs to phase through the restraints and for his body to start sinking into the bed. “HOLY _SHI_ —”

“I gotcha!” exclaimed Danny, pulling Vlad back onto the bed by his shoulder. 

“What…I… _What’s_ …!” Vlad, now once again tangible, was beginning to hyperventilate.

“Vlad.” Danny kneeled beside the bed, and put a firm hand on each of the other’s shoulders. “Take a couple breaths. You need to calm down. You’re oka—“

“HOW CAN I CALM DOWN?! I just…just...I don’t even know _what_ I just—”

“First, you levitated, and then you turned intangible,” said Danny, trying to keep his voice as level as he possibly could. “But look—you’re fine! You’re on the bed. You’re here. So am I. You’re fine. Can you take a few deep breaths?”

Shakily, Vlad complied. 

“Good,” said Danny. He walked to the door of the hospital room, and after ensuring that there was no one watching through the window, pulled the shade down and locked the door. “Now, I’m going to show you something, but you need to promise not to freak out, okay?”

Vlad’s eyes widened, but after a moment, he gave a small, tense nod.

“Okay.” Staying in his human form—he didn’t think Vlad was ready to see him turn into Phantom quite yet—Danny flew into the air. 

“ _You_ …?” asked Vlad, shocked, after sharply inhaling. 

“Yeah,” answered Danny. “Since my accident. And I can go intangible too—watch.” He flew to Vlad’s bed, and, allowed his hand to phase through it.

Vlad stared at him, stunned silent. 

“I told you,” continued Danny after a moment. “You’re not alone on this one. Okay?”

After a moment, Vlad affirmed. “I...Okay.”

Danny landed, and sat down on the bed next to Vlad. 

“The way I see it,” said Danny after the other man seemed to have calm down a little. “These are _abilities_ —they’re not just symptoms of an illness, or scars from an accident. They’re sorta...well, they're sorta like superpowers.”

“ _Superpowers_? What are you, a child?"

Danny smiled--if Vlad was able to be cynical, he had clearly regained his senses at least partially. “I kinda look at them that way," he said. Then, after a moment, he asked. “Do you want to try it? Flying, I mean?”

Vlad paused, but then nodded.

“Okay. First, you gotta stand up,” said Danny, slowly helping Vlad to his feet. “Then, just sorta imagine that you’re not bound by gravity—like it would be the easiest thing to just float away…”

Then both he and Vlad were in the air.

“W-Woah!” Vlad extended both of his arms out to his sides, airplane-style, in an attempt to steady himself. As an alternative, Danny offered his hands, which Vlad gratefully took. 

After making several, slow laps around the room, they landed on the hospital bed. 

“We can save intangibility for tomorrow, okay?” asked Danny.

Vlad nodded his head, solemnly. 

“Oh come on!” said Danny, nudging Vlad’s shoulder with his. “You just flew! How cool is that?!”

Vlad looked at Danny, and for the first time in a long while, flashed a genuine smile.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More language in this one. Just fyi. Enjoy!

For weeks, Danny had been helping him learn to _fly_ and to _walk through walls_ , for Christ’s sake; by this point, thought Vlad, he should be in a state of being perpetually unfazed. Nevertheless, he cried out the first time he could not see his body. Sitting up after awakening from another sleep, restless as all his nights had been since the accident, Vlad looked down to see nothing of himself on the bed, directly in his line-of-sight. First he screamed, then he gasped, then he closed his eyes, partially convinced he was still in a dream. 

When he opened them again, there was still no visible body on the bed. 

_Shit!_ He felt his heart start to race. _Shit, shit shit!_

He closed his eyes again, reminded himself to breathe. _Danny will be here soon. You just need to stay calm until Danny gets here._

When the younger man did arrive several hours later, he seemed confused. “Vlad?”

“I’m on the bed! Don’t _tell me_ this is another one of your _‘abilities!_ ’”

Danny smiled, suddenly understanding. By way of response, he disappeared from view and then immediately reappeared. “ ‘Fraid so.”

“Great.” Vlad said sarcastically, rolling his eyes. “Now, will you please just explain to me how to become visible again?!”

Danny grinned.

* * *

“What’s wrong?” Danny asked one morning when he walked into Vlad’s hospital room a week later. Vlad, the younger man noticed, sat slumped on the bed, dejected, and had no pithy remark when Danny entered. Something was not right.

“I haven’t had a flare in a month.”

“I know,” said Danny, confused. “Isn’t that a good thing?”

“No! Because the doctors are saying that this means I’m out of immediate danger, and they can’t keep me here! But I’ve still got the acne, so I’m still sick. And it might be contagious, so they can’t release me. So they’re shipping me off to some long-term care facility instead!”

“Okay, but why is that a problem? You’ll probably have more room. And, to be honest, you’ll probably have more privacy. So we won’t have to be as carful about making sure no one’s watching when we train…”

“ _We?_ You mean…?”

Danny looked at him, agog. “Did you think that I wasn’t going to follow you to wherever it is you’re going? Vlad, of course I will! Why would you even think that?”

Vlad shrugged, refusing to meet Danny’s eyes, and then laid down on his bed facing the ceiling. He said nothing.

“Did you seriously _still_ think I worked for the hospital?”

“No,” said Vlad. “I just…thought that they wouldn’t allow you to come…or something.”

“ _Allow me to come?_ ” Danny was incredulous. “Helloooo! Earth to Vlad! I can turn intangible and invisible, remember?”

“I’m well aware,” said Vlad, but this didn’t seem to cheer him at all.

“I’ve said it before,” said Danny. “And I’ll keep saying it until you get the idea through your head, you fruit loop: _You. Are. Not. Alone. On. This. One._ Okay? I’m going to be there for you until you’re through this.”

“Why?!” said Vlad, sitting up to face Danny, suddenly animated. “Why are you helping me like this?!”

“Because I’ve been through something like this too.” responded Danny without missing a beat. “And I know how terrifying this is! And I’m not about to let you go through it alone. You shouldn’t have to!” _And I know what this would do to you, if you had to do it on your own,_ he added to himself. _And no one deserves that._

Danny looked up at Vlad and registered, for the first time today, the fear in Vlad’s eyes. After all this time, he still was terrified that Danny would leave, that he’d be alone.

“Hey,” he said, sitting on the bed next to Vlad. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Vlad looked at him, eyes watery, but said nothing. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” Danny repeated.

* * *

Vlad’s room in the new care facility was surprisingly comfortable. For one thing, Danny had been right: it was much larger than the hospital room, and it had a desk, dresser and mirror in addition to merely a bed and chair. And Danny had also been right in his assessment that he would have more privacy; since he was out of immediate danger, he didn’t need to be observed, and, as opposed to the constant stream of doctors and nurses who had passed (though rarely entered) his hospital room, here there only ever seemed to be a nurse who came to deliver meals, and a doctor who would come every couple of days. Hardly any people at all.

True to his word, Danny still came every day. And now, since the flares hardly occurred at all anymore, they trained. Vlad was, according to Danny, so close to mastering flying, intangibility, and invisibility, so they worked hard. And to do so was easy, now that they had little cause to fear being spotted.

One day, after a particularly brutal training session, Vlad took a nap. When he awoke, he felt better, physically, than he had even since the accident, and found Danny standing in front of the mirror, with an expression on his face that could only be categorized as odd.

“What is it?” asked Vlad.

“What?”

“That look on your face. What’s wrong?”

“Oh! Nothing, nothing!”

Perhaps it was the newfound vitality that he found he had suddenly acquired after his nap, or perhaps it was because he was eager to show off his training, but whatever the reason, Vlad decided to fly at Danny in an attempt to cheer him up. As taught, he leaned forward, stretching his arms out in front of him…

Wait. His arms. _Those weren’t his arms._ The arms he saw in front of him were blue. And his hands—were those _claws?_

Forgetting his attempt to fly, he sprang off the bed and sprinted to the mirror, pushing Danny aside. 

“Don’t freak out don’t freak out!” Danny expelled quickly, but Vlad didn’t hear him. He was too focused on the monstrosity in the mirror. Starting back at him, Vlad saw what he initially thought to describe as a demon. It had blue skin that glowed literally and eerily, claws extending from each hand, red eyes, and two tufts of black hair standing like horns on his head.

Vlad opened his mouth, horrified, and though he wanted to scream, but all that came out was: “I…I’m…That’s...”

“A ghost,” finished Danny. “That’s a ghost.”

“Then I’m…I’m… _dead_?!”

“No! Oh God no, Vlad. Let me show you,” said Danny. And before Vlad’s eyes, two white rings of energy appeared around Danny’s waist and moved to surround his body. As they did so, Danny transformed into a figure in his likeness, but who had bright white hair to Danny’s usual black, and glowing skin and green eyes. He looked at Vlad.

“You’re a _ghost?_ You’ve been a ghost this whole time?” _Foolish me, to think that another human being would be interested in helping me._

“No, I’m like you. I’m a half ghost.”

“ _Half_ -ghost? Jack and Maddie never said anything about half-ghosts!”

“That’s because there’s never been one before yo—I mean, before us. We’re the first. We’re still alive, and we’re still human. But each of our accidents gave us some ghost DNA. That’s why we can fly, that’s why we can go intangible, that’s why we can turn invisible. In fact, it’s much easier to do all of those things in our ghost forms. We have _ghost powers._ ”

“And you’re…okay with it?”

“I wasn’t at first. But then I realized that this…it gives me an opportunity to help people. And to protect the people I love. And for that, it’s worth it.”

Vlad buried his face in his hands. “This is terrifying, Danny. I mean, am I still… _me?_ Ghosts…I’ve always been operating under the assumption that ghosts are evil, people who, when they died, couldn’t let go and become so haunted with what happened to them…they just…hurt. And hurt others.”

“We’re ghosts, true,” said Danny. “But we’re also human. So who you are now—well, that’s up to you.”

“ _Is_ it?”

“Yeah.”

Vlad nodded.

“And as I’ve said…”

“Yes, I know. I’m _not alone on this one._ ”


	4. Chapter 4

“That was…” panted Danny, landing on the floor of Vlad’s room. “awesome. You are so good at those force fields…I couldn’t even touch you!”

“Well, given how long it took me to master the ecto-plasmic energy blasts,” said Vlad, following suit and landing next to Danny. “I’m glad I’m decent at _something_ here.”

“Don’t sell yourself short. You’re decent at a lot of things. More than decent. And you’re going to keep getting stronger. I bet you’ll keep developing new abilities too—things I can’t even do!”

“Alone?” asked Vlad, transforming back into his human self, and instinctually putting a hand onto his face. It still felt strange that it was clear, smooth without the acne that had been there for all those years. It hardly felt like _his_ face anymore; Vlad was reminded of the first time he saw his ghost form’s arms, and they were unfamiliar and strange.

“You’re never gonna be alone, Vlad,” said Danny transforming back into his human self too. “I realized recently that no one really is. Sometimes, you just gotta reach out.”

“But it’ll different. It won’t be like what _our_ relationship is.”

“I know,” said Danny. “But the next step is one you’ve gotta take without me. I can’t help you decide how to integrate your powers into your life or how to use them. Who and how you want to tell about them…that’s all up to you.”

Vlad was silent.

“But it’s exciting! You getting out of here, after all these years! Getting to live somewhere other than a medical facility! Right?

“There was time when I didn’t think I’d ever see the outside world again.”

“I know.”

“Perhaps I wouldn’t have, without you.”

“You would’ve. I just helped you through it.”

“I…” Vlad tried to speak, but found the words getting caught in his throat. How _would_ he have gotten through the past eight years without Danny? He tried to remember how he had felt for the few months in the hospital before Danny had come for the first time: terrified, in physical agony, isolated—God, he had forgotten how no one would even _look_ at him, much less make physical contact. What would have happened if he had felt isolated that way for _eight_ years? No one to help him through the pain, and the fear…What if he started developing his _ghost powers_ on his own? He would have literally gone insane, he was convinced. Danny, his reassurance, and his constant presence had been the _only_ thing to keep him sane and _himself_ through it all. 

Vlad wanted to express these sentiments, but found that he could not properly channel them into words. Instead, he asked: “Is this it, then? Will I ever see you again?”

“Yeah,” said Danny, looking down. “I just…hope we can be friends when you do.”

What an odd thing to say, thought Vlad. Of course they would be friends—after everything they had been through together—how could they be anything but?

“Welp,” said Danny. And he extended his hand for Vlad to shake. Instead, Vlad pulled him into an embrace. 

Then as suddenly, it seemed to Vlad, as he had appeared eight years previously, Danny transformed into his ghost form, flew through the wall, and was gone.

* * *

Vlad wasn’t quite sure what to do with himself after he left the hospital; he had been in it for so long, that he had forgotten what it was to have aspirations outside of it. He had no family to return to. Eventually, thinking of childhood dreams, and longing for peace and tranquility, he purchased a small dairy farm in Wisconsin with his decent, though not exorbitant, savings. It would be a busy life, he thought, but a peaceful and quiet one, and he could use that after the stress of the hospital. And, because after using them on-and-off for years he itched to use his ghost powers, it gave him plenty of space to do so without being seen. 

He rose early, milked cows, made cheese. Found one morning, to his great surprise that he wasn’t the only ghost (or half-ghost) in the area; the ghost of the Wisconsin Dairy King appeared one day as Vlad sat eating cheese and toast for breakfast after milking the cows. 

“Never seen you around here before, dontcha know!” it said, before introducing itself.

“Pleasure,” grumbled Vlad.

Nevertheless, they made it a habit of seeing each other.

It was liberating, too, to use his ghost powers, so, at night, Vlad flew around the county without a particular destination.

One evening, while flying over farms and fields, he saw a child wandering alone, distressed—clearly lost. His instinct initially told him to fly past, apathetic, but then unbidden, he heard Danny’s voice in his head: _“These are abilities—they’re not just symptoms of an illness, or scars from an accident. They’re sorta...well, they're sorta like superpowers.”_

_Superpowers_ , Vlad thought. And he swooped down to pick up the child. A few simple questions were all he needed to determine where he lived. He flew there in ten minutes, phased through the roof when he arrived and laid him in his bed before leaving.

He acquired a police radio after that, listened to it carefully for mentions of lost children.

The years passed quickly in a flurry of days of selling cheese to farmer’s markets and meals with the Dairy King and of nights of patrolling for lost people. Rural Wisconsin, he came to learn, held many: children, like the first he found, drunk drivers, whom Vlad would stop and fly home, and lost souls who wandered the fields at night. For these people, Vlad, who knew the importance of a friend for a lonely person, would land and listen, bring them ice cream from his farm. When they had unloaded their burdens, he would fly them home, put them in bed, and when they awoke in the mornings they would feel lighter, happier, but convinced that the whole ordeal had been a dream. 

One night, he patrolled the area searching for the subject of an AMBER Alert, a girl whom, police had reason to believe had wandered from her hometown in Northern Illinois, across the Illinois-Wisconsin border. He found her, eventually, and after asking her a few key questions, determined where to take her in Illinois. It was a small town, not one that Vlad had heard of before. Amity Park, it was called. 

After a few moments of searching, he located the house, and turning invisible, phased into the living room, where the child’s parents, weary and watery-eyed, were watching TV. As soon as he set the child down, she turned visible again. Her parents cried out with joy. They were, Vlad knew, momentarily too overwhelmed with happiness to question the absurdity of it all now—that would come later, after the girl was safely in bed. 

He prepared to leave, when he heard the news anchor on the television mention ghosts, and his intrest was piqued. 

“Local Teen Ghost Invis-o-Bill,” said the voice from the TV and Vlad smirked. _Invis-o-Bill?_ What kind of name for a ghost was _that_? “Causes havoc again, as he is spotted animating items from a local garage sale all over the town!”

The picture changed to show the so-called “havoc,” and Vlad nearly unintentionally became visible again. It was _Danny_. Admittedly, it was a Danny years younger than he had been when Vlad first met him, and whose control of his powers was far less impressive—similar to Vlad, in those early, terrifying days when he seemed to develop a new ability every couple of weeks—but it was undoubtedly him. After years training together in their ghost forms, Vlad would recognize Danny’s anywhere. Like the parents of the girl whom he had just brought home, Vlad was too overjoyed at the moment to think about the absurdity of the particular situation. That would come later. For now, he thought, he knew just that he had to find Danny.

* * *

Vlad achieved this goal two evenings later when he returned to Amity Park.

The young Danny was out that evening, patrolling, it seemed to Vlad—apparently, thought Vlad, Danny had believed in himself as a superhero long before Vlad had met him—when Vlad, in his ghost form intercepted his route, hovering in front of him.

“Oh great,” sighed Danny. “A new one. So what’s your thing?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Box Ghost does boxes, Skulker’s a hunter…and you are?”

“I’m a friend,” responded Vlad. 

“You don’t want to attack me? Or terrorize the town?”

“No. Don’t you know that not all ghosts are evil, Danny?”

“H-How do you know my name?”

“What, do you prefer _Invis-O-Bill?_ ”

“Ugh,” responded Danny. “No. I don’t even know where that name came from…But that’s beside the point! Who are you?”

“I’m like you—a half-ghost. If we find somewhere to land, I’ll show you.”

“I’m—I’m not the only one?”

“No,” said Vlad. “You’re not alone on this one.”

* * *

When Danny removed Clockwork’s time medallion and found himself back in his own present day Amity Park, he initially flew home to FentonWorks.

“Danny!” greeted his dad after Danny transformed back into his human self and walked through the door. “Is everything okay, son? I thought you were spending the weekend at Vladdy’s to help him with a project!”

“Vlad’s?” asked Danny. “In _Wisconsin?_ ”

“No,” responded his dad, concerned. “Vladdy hasn’t lived in Wisconsin in four years, Danny. You’re over at his house almost every day—are you feeling alright, son?”

“Uh…Yeah. Just having a bit of a brain fart, I guess. Can you, uh, remind me where he lives?”

After a moment, his father complied, and Danny flew to the given address. Phasing through the wall, he found Vlad standing at a computer. 

“Ah Danny,” he said, by way of greeting. “Did you manage to find that information about Skulker from your parents’ lab?”

“Uh, no,” replied Danny. “I, uh, didn’t realize that that was what I was meant to be doing.”

Vlad turned to face Danny, brows furrowed. “Organizing my ghost files was your idea, don’t you remember? Are you feeling okay, my boy?”

“Yeah,” said Danny gripping his neck. “Fine. It’s just that…well, my last interaction with anyone in the Ghost Zone was asking Clockwork to send me back in time so that I could be there to support a certain person hospitalized with ecto-acne. So, uh, this is a bit different than how I remember things.”

Vlad was silent for a moment, as understanding flashed in his eyes. Finally, he said simply: “Danny.”

“Hey, Vlad.”

“I…I knew this day would come, eventually. But it's been so long.”

Danny smiled. "Has it? It seems like you and I have been hanging out a bunch recently."

"You know what I mean! It's been a long time since...well, since I saw the version of you who was there with me in the hospital. 

"I know."

“You’d think that after all these years of thinking about it, I’d know what to say to you when you did come back.” Vlad sighed. “I…I have to thank you. I don’t know what I would have become if you hadn’t been there for me.”

“I do,” Danny sighed.

“Was it bad?”

“Do you really want to know?”

Vlad nodded, tentatively.

“Well, the Vlad Masters I knew—well, first of all, you called your ghost form Vlad Plasmius.”

“Vlad _Plasmius_? That’s almost as bad as _Invis-O-Bill_!”

“I know!” laughed Danny. “But anyway, you were a man so lonely and in pain, that you channeled all of that into vowing revenge against my dad. Tried to kill him on several occasions. And you had this really weird obsession with my mom.”

“I suppose—I missed Jack and Maddie in the hospital, before you came. Especially because I was so alone. And with no one to be there for me to help me through all of the fear, I suppose I can see how I might have vented all of it at Jack. And in looking for something good to hold onto, I can see how my minor crush on Maddie might have bloomed into an obsession.”

“Yeah,” responded Danny. “And when you found out that I was a half-ghost, you became obsessed with having me as a son. When I wouldn’t disavow my father for you to train me, you went even crazier—tried cloning me, and when even that didn’t work, you tried to acquire power to fill the void. You became mayor of Amity Park, and then tried to take over the world…needless to say, we were enemies.”

“Why,” asked Vlad. “Why would you do what you did for an enemy?”

“Because I could. Part of my _superpowers_ , I guess.” Danny grinned. “And if I had the ability to keep you from being that pained, twisted person, I had to. Besides, it wasn't just for you. My life is a whole lot easier without having to fight you, and I mean there were countless--”

“Thank you,” Vlad interrupted, and Danny didn’t think he had ever heard anyone say something so sincere. 

“I’m just glad,” said Danny, smiling. “That neither of us are alone now.”

Vlad, too, smiled. “Me too, little badger. Me too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for sticking with me through all of this! I really hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed!


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